


It's Called A Cruel Irony

by ViscountessAberowen



Category: Century Trilogy - Ken Follett, Winter of the World - Ken Follett
Genre: Fitzherbert family drama, Gen, this fandom needs more content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:42:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29355900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViscountessAberowen/pseuds/ViscountessAberowen
Summary: “I had a visitor today,” Boy said. “Lloyd Williams.”"What did he want?"“He said he was my brother.”
Relationships: Boy Fitzherbert & Earl Fitzherbert, Ethel Williams/Earl Fitzherbert (past)
Kudos: 6





	It's Called A Cruel Irony

**Author's Note:**

> Neither Boy nor Fitz have a PoV in Winter of the World, but I wanted to explore the moment when Boy confronts Fitz about Lloyd's claims on his parentage

Boy’s head was thrumming painfully. Leave it to that Bolshevik to pick such an impractical time to drop a bomb like that.

It had been disbelief at first. How dare that fool imply such things of  _ Boy’s _ family? That prat whose whole purpose in life had seemed to be to make Boy’s own life miserable.

But then a conversation with his father made Boy’s certainty waver slightly. ‘I’m pretty sure I’ve only got one’. One bastard. That’s what his father had said.

But Boy couldn’t be  _ that _ unlucky. The coincidence... no. Lloyd Williams was grasping at straws like a dying man, that was all. He wanted to marry Boy’s wife, and Boy didn’t want to get a divorce. Lloyd was only pulling at whichever strings he thought would help.

Honestly, the nerve of those socialists still surprised him at times.

At any rate, Boy’s hangover hadn’t got any better from seeing that particular bastard —his father’s or otherwise— and he was now lying in bed and cursing Lloyd Williams for bringing him a nauseous wave of feelings.

‘You’ll ask your father about it. You won’t be able to restrain yourself. You’ll have to find out.’ Boy hated to admit it, but the Bolshevik was right. He  _ knew _ he couldn’t just let it go. The resemblance in the picture Lloyd had shown him —although Boy had tried his best not to notice— was stunning. Boy’s grandfather was Lloyd Williams with sideburns.

He wondered whether it was that or his inability to process alcohol that made him feel so sick.

“Of all the people,” Boy muttered bitterly. “Your unholy bastard had to be the man who stole my wife.”

Boy’s image of his father felt broken. Defiled. His father had strong, proper children. Sure, Boy knew he was no academic mastermind, or war hero. But he was fighting those bloody Nazis. And meanwhile, what did people like Lloyd Williams do, huh? They spent their days preaching their unfunded ideals and bedding married women.

Shameful. It was logically impossible that Lloyd could even so much as be related to Boy.

He only got up by the time lunch was ready. Boy was in a bad mood, and truly didn’t want company, but his mother insisted.

She always did when he was home. Boy felt terrible denying her what little time she had with him.

He spent over an hour there. Long, excruciating minutes looking pointedly at his mother and wondering whether she knew.

She must’ve known Father wasn’t faithful. If anyone had fixed Boy with the idea that men of their class weren’t expected to be, it was his father. But he was dying to ask her if she knew that his father had slept with some whore around the same time they were so desperately trying to conceive an heir.

Without meaning to, he felt a trickle of sympathy for Daisy. He imagined that’s what she would’ve become if they had grown old together. A housewife doomed to wait up for a husband who didn’t love her.

He shook the thought away. Daisy wasn’t his mother. Daisy was a woman born in this century, a woman much more impetuous, and much less classy. Sleeping around with a socialist... She was  _ rich _ for God’s sake! What a hypocrite!

Boy felt used. Daisy was a selfish woman. She took whatever she needed from whoever had to offer it. She wanted class, she took it from Boy without a second glance. She wanted payback for his own infidelity, she used his potential socialist brother.

Good God, a socialist brother. Boy was mildly relieved about the fact that spreading that information would damage Lloyd so much as himself. He had no doubt that otherwise, the man would’ve tried to push that button before. To pressure Father into giving him money, or something.

Boy tried to push those ideas out of his head. It wasn’t easy, though. His mother insisted on talking. She still had an accent and, not for the first time, Boy wondered why she hadn’t taught them Russian, even behind Father’s back. To have at least a bit of her homeland with her...

“There’s something in your mind,” she said.

How very observant, he wanted to snap. There’s always something in a man’s head.

“I’m just tired,” he lied instead.

For all that Mother annoyed him sometimes, Boy felt a streak of protectiveness towards the woman. If this whole thing turned out to be fictitious, no harm done. If it turned out his father had, not a nameless, faceless bastard, but a known socialist as a son, Boy would rather she didn’t find out any time soon. Or ever, if it was on him.

“You should lie down for a while,” Mother suggested. Boy imagined she only ever spoke that softly to him and Andy. “You look a bit flushed. It is not a fever, is it?”

“I’m fine,” he stated, more sharply than he intended. “I’ll take a nap, perhaps, in the afternoon.”

“Will you be staying for dinner?” Mother’s hopeful undertone made Boy flinch. Had he really been away every night of his leave? “Your father will be pleased to see you.”

Boy smiled tightly, “I wanted to talk to him, actually. So I expect I’ll be staying this evening, after all.”

She gave him an honest smile, and Boy noted she looked much younger when she was happy. Had he really seen his mother happy so seldom that he was surprised to witness it?

A voice in his head, the loud, boisterous half of his brain, scoffed. He was getting sentimental. Boy Fitzherbert was anything  _ but _ . There was a war going on, it was absolutely reasonable that his mother was unhappy.

“What is it that you want to talk to him about?” Mother asked. “Is everything all right?”

“Just something,” he shrugged. “Nothing to worry about, I promise.”

The rest of it was just as tense, at least on Boy’s behalf. And his afternoon nap was a failed mission. Nothing he did could take the image of Daisy and Lloyd together out of his brain. Disgusting.

He heard the front door open, and the butler greeting his father.

Now or never, Boy thought.

He did debate for a bit on whether he should start with the whiskey now, or if he’d rather be sober for the whole conversation.

Yeah, not a chance. He served himself a generous amount and downed it at once. Then again. One for courage, and one so he wouldn’t shoot his father at any given point of their tête à tête.

He waited for Father to lock himself in his study. Boy pretended it wasn’t stalling. Father had to be calm enough, or he wouldn’t even agree to talk.

Boy took a deep breath. He felt like a child, running to papa so he’d chase the monsters away.

But Lloyd’s ludicrous nonsense wasn’t a monster under his bed, and Boy had been trying to convince himself it was a lie all afternoon. Lloyd and the former Earl could look similar for many reasons, and for all Boy knew, Lloyd was just the great-grandson of one of the previous Earls. That was all.

He knocked on Father’s study. He felt his heart beating ever so slightly faster than it should.

He opened the door a third of the way and put his head and torso through the gap.

“Boy!” his father grinned. Boy ignored the similarities between the green eyes of the man in front of him, and those of the Bolshevik. “Good gracious, I had no idea you were home. I expected you to be out and about.”

He sounded quite happy at the turn of events, Boy registered. Although rather surprised.

“Do you have a minute?” Or half an hour. Maybe a whole one, if I lose my temper.

“Of course, son,” Father gestured for Boy to sit in front of him. “What’s the matter?”

Hmm... For all that Boy knew what he wanted to tell and accuse his father of, and possibly even resent him for, he hadn’t really planned on how to breach the subject.

“I had a visitor today,” Boy said at last. “Lloyd Williams.”

His father’s eyes hardened, “Yes, your mother told me. What did Williams want?”

Boy knew ‘your mother told me’ also stood for ‘she also mentioned who your wife’s paramour is’.

“What do you  _ think _ he wanted?” Boy snapped. Then he took a deep breath. Not yet. “He wanted me to divorce Daisy, of course.”

“Oh, what a mess,” Father supplied unhelpfully. He looked relieved, or perhaps Boy was just seeing what he expected. “You know, maybe you should put some thought into it. It might do you both some good to put everything behind you.”

Like you may have done with whoever Williams’s mother was?

“No,” Boy stated. “It simply won’t do. She wants to have children with him? Fine! While I’m alive, they’ll be condemned bastards for all I care! It will teach her right!”

His father frowned slightly, but his expression remained closed. Boy didn’t want to debate his not-divorce with his family any longer. It wasn’t why he was speaking to Father.

“He said he was my brother,” Boy told him, his tone turning casual. “That you knocked up some whore, and he’s the result.”

His father’s cheeks became pink, but whether from embarrassment or anger, Boy hadn’t yet figured out.

“He looked me in the eye,” Boyd kept talking, anything to fill the charged silence. “And  _ suggested _ I asked you, just like that.”

“So that’s what you did,” Father asked slowly. “We take orders from the East End now?”

“Don’t dodge the subject!” Boy’s voice was rising. He tried to control his emotions. Keep the monster that had been growing inside of him at bay. “Is he your son, or not?”

Father looked like he’d reprimand Boy for being disrespectful. He hesitated for a couple of seconds, in the end, Father simply sat back against his chair and sighed.

“Yes,” he said. “Lloyd Williams is my son.”

Boy had a sudden urge to throw up. How could his goddamned father just affirm such a thing like that? He took a deep breath.

“Unbelievable...” he muttered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You had no reason to know,” Father raised an eyebrow. “I haven’t spoken to him in my life. I know nothing of him. Or of his family. They’re just a pain for people like us, who have the future of this country in our minds.”

“Funny, I’d have thought you knew enough of his mother,” Boy sneered.

Immediately, he realised he’d made the wrong move. Whereas his father’s face had become resigned, and then sceptical, the moment Boy had opened his mouth and spoken, it had become cold and displeased.

“I haven’t had anything to do with Lloyd Williams’s mother since before either of you were born,” Father explained calmly. An ugly calm, like that quiet minute between lightning and thunder. “The only reasons I’ve had to speak to her have been work-related. And you know that.”

But why the defensiveness? Boy was sure his father would shrug his unwise comment away, with a reprimand, perhaps, and a reminder not to be a hypocrite. Unless... unless it hadn’t been a fling.

No way.

There was a limit on this madness. His father not only shagging but also  _ falling in love  _ with a... a what? A maid, Lloyd had said. His father had fallen for the charms of his bloody house maid.

His disgust must’ve shown.

“Don’t play innocent with me, Boy,” Father snapped. “Who do you think pays for you to keep those two prostitutes in Aldgate?”

“I’m not angry because you slept with a maid!” Boy scoffed. “I’m even willing to forgive that you were careless enough to impregnate her. But you fancied her!”

His father neither confirmed nor denied it. Which was an answer on itself. This was much, much more than what Boy was expecting to hear.

“Then perhaps you’ll be happy,” Boy felt a sudden tightness in his throat. “Your love child with the socialist MP is very happy, isn’t he now? You liked her so much, might as well love the bastard more than your real son, too. Perhaps you’ll feel overjoyed that it was him Daisy preferred. That it was him who she left me for!”

Father, predictably, was not happy at all.

“Don’t raise your voice at me,” he said, deadly quiet, standing up. “We’ll speak like men, we’re not savages. And I won’t have you throwing such accusations.”

Boy kept quiet. The soft thumps of his father’s cane as we walked towards the window felt like drums. He knew better than to rile the man even more. He’d spoken without thinking, aiming to hurt, but he was mildly surprised to realise he  _ was _ , in fact, shocked by his father’s lack of denial. How little did he think of his true family that he sought refuge in the arms of an employee? What could Williams’s mother have that Boy’s didn’t?

“Whatever feelings I had for Ethel Will-Leckwith were fleeting, and I had overgrown them time before you or Lloyd were born,” the glint of regret, and the ocean of resentment in Father’s eyes made the knot on Boy’s throat tighten. “It was just sex, Boy! You, better than anyone, know the difference!”

But that was the point wasn’t it? If it had been just sex, there would’ve been no feelings other than lust. Love least of all. He wanted his father to look at him in the eye, to align his memories with his speech.

“And while you may doubt my feelings towards this family, or perhaps you think I’ve been unfair to you,” Father stood by the window and observed the people on the street. “I’ll remind you it isn’t Lloyd Williams whom I’ve brought up, it isn’t Lloyd Williams whose every whim I’ve granted and whose every choice I’ve supported and encouraged, and it isn’t Lloyd Williams the son I’ve prayed for every single day ever since he joined the army. Is he, now?”

Boy heard his father’s voice break. He took a few deep breaths.

“No, papa,” Boy murmured. The silence in the room was tense enough for his voice to be heard. “I know that... I  _ know _ . I was angry. I...”

He felt his eyes prickle and fought with life and soul not  _ cry _ just because his father had admitted to worrying about him. Boy had had too little alcohol for this.

“Of course I disagree with Daisy,” Father finally sat down across from Boy again —just when he was hoping not to be the focus of scrutinising—. “But I see that she’s young, foolish, and not at all worthy of you. That is why I insist you end this ridiculous vendetta against her —not for Lloyd Williams, he’ll realise his mistake soon enough— but for you! It will poison you! Keeping up hating someone because they’ve hurt you will corrode  _ you _ more than them.”

Boy nodded silently. He didn’t wonder how his father knew any of that. It felt both like a punch in the face and a weight off his shoulders. He felt drained of energy, and he didn’t want to linger in the experience behind Father’s words. At least now everything was out in the open.

“I’ll think about it,” Boy promised. His father nodded, Boy guessed it was the closest to agreeing that he had ever been. “I’m...”  _ sorry I threw this in your face right now, but I might die tomorrow and I wanted to know for sure _ . “...glad you told me.”

Father nodded again, and although Boy would’ve never characterised the Earl Fitzherbert as  _ hesitant _ , the look which he gave Boy felt just that: unsure, conflicted, even mildly expectant.

“I won’t tell Mother,” he also said. “It would upset her.” _I won’t confirm what she probably already suspects. Because women —for all that men liked to pretend otherwise— are clever. And observant._

Father had the decency to lower his eyes, the shameful pink on his cheeks returned, “I’d appreciate that.”  _ She probably already knows. But thank you for not hitting where it hurts the most _ .

“And straighten your clothes,” Father added. “You look dishevelled.”

Boy stood, tried in vain to flatten the wrinkles in his shirt with his hands, and stared at his father for a moment.

Earl Fitzherbert was lost in thought. Probably reminiscing memories. Memories Boy neither was, nor wanted, to be privy to.

Once back in his room, he grabbed his packet of cigarettes —cigars were for happy moments, he was anything but— and leaned on the ledge of his window, puffing smoke into the air, all the way until dinner.


End file.
